Road of the Party:

Consciousness and Sponteneity

One of the most decisive tasks facing us is to transform the widespread but spontaneous struggles of the people into a conscious and systematic movement.

Over the last several years, not only millions but tens of millions of people have come out against the capitalist program of war, robbery and repression.

But who cannot see how these struggles are held back because they remain largely spontaneous?

The millions who are struggling for change are not yet united around a common political aim and program. They are not yet working in concert according to an overall plan for merging the various struggles and directing them in the most effective channels. There is very little organization and what there is remains mostly local and temporary.

Thus the very conditions of our movement demand political independence, clarity and organization. Political independence, clarity and organization are all things that we ourselves must consciously create. And these tasks are all the more imperative because the capitalists take advantage of any defect in our movement and create more disorganization and confusion.

We must never forget 2 things.

Firstly, the capitalists literally inundate society with their lies to prevent people from coming out against their program of war, robbery and repression. Thus the very pervasiveness of capitalist ideology and politics means that it will inevitably do its dirty work unless it is consciously struggled against.

Yet more. The capitalists wage a continuous and all-sided ideological and political struggle against the people's movements. For example, the Democratic Party and its opportunist "left" wing are used to infiltrate into the people's movement and divert our struggles. How much energy was lost during the last elections because too many people remained under the influence of the Democratic Party? In other words, the capitalists are conscious of their exploiting aims and are consciously struggling to impose them on society. Don't we too need to be conscious?

How do we transform our spontaneous struggles into a conscious and systematic movement?

– Firstly we must continually clarify and popularize our own aims and make the struggle for these aims the very starting point of our work. If, for example, we limit the anti-war struggle to always reacting to one war after another, we will not get very far. We must unify and direct our struggle around the positive program of ending U.S. imperialist intervention altogether and winning the peace. We must aim at such concrete demands as withdrawing all U.S. troops stationed abroad and demilitarizing our country.

– On the basis of our aims, we must work out and popularize the strategy, the general course of our struggle. That is we must delineate what the problem is: what classes and political forces are behind the program of war, repression and robbery and what classes and forces must be mobilized to bring about the necessary changes.

– In addition to working out the general, strategic course of our struggle, we must constantly sum up our experience, study and discuss the changing balance of political forces. This enables us to work out the immediate tactics of our struggle – to defeat roadblocks and release our initiative according to the concrete conditions.

– We must continually build up our own organizations, strengthening our collective participation and consciousness of the struggle.

In sum, we must get up every morning determined to advance the independent cause of the people and work according to the strategy, tactics, methods and organization we ourselves have created. This is the way to consciously advance, step-by-step, towards our goal of a new world without war, colonialism, exploitation and oppression.